Write clearly, be nice to others, and be very careful when posting anything related to politics or religion. When asking for help, remember that everyone here is a volunteer. Prefer editing your previous post over double posting. No animated avatars or graphical signatures. Don’t plagiarize other’s work or post inappropriate images, and don’t abuse the ability to upload attachments. Contact the Forum Moderators for forum moderation issues and the Multiplayer Moderators for multiplayer issues. Please report any instances you see of bots, spam, and other users violating the Posting Guidelines. And finally, even if many people probably won’t read past this, that doesn’t mean the rest of the rules below won’t be enforced.

Welcome to the Battle for Wesnoth!

These forums are intended to be a friendly and productive environment for players to discuss the game, ask questions, create new content, and get to know each other! Additionally, the development team watches and interacts with the community here in order to continually improve the game based on people’s feedback, ideas, and contributions.

In order to make this a fun and worthwhile experience, both for you and for everybody else, we expect you to take the time to read these Posting Guidelines and to follow them when communicating with other members of Wesnoth’s community.

Also, while the below rules apply to the entire forums, some forum sections may have additional rules or guidelines that need to be followed as well. For example, Technical Support has additional instructions on how to properly report a bug, so that the development team will have the information they need to be able to locate and fix it.

Write clearly
These forums are intended to be a welcoming environment for people of all ages and nationalities who wish to join the Wesnoth community. Therefore, in order to ensure that we can all understand each other, please try to make sure your posts are in clean English. If English is not your first language, it is acceptable to post in your native language along with an English translation of your post. More importantly, do not use L33t-sp33k, Txtspk, or any other unusual syntax that may make your post difficult or impossible to read, such as roleplaying as an angry Orc.

Be nice
Always make sure to be civil and polite. If you are not sure whether or not your post might be considered offensive, err on the side of caution — it can be very difficult to judge tone over the internet. That said, ABUSING CAPS is considered rude and equivalent to shouting on the Internet.

Be respectful
Trolling, inciting flame wars, or aggressively demanding attention will result in deleted posts, locked topics, and other punitive actions. Whether directed at other members of the Wesnoth community or not, any form of harassment, use of derogatory slurs, discriminatory language or conduct, or hate speech in general, constitute actions that will not be tolerated and will result in an immediate, permanent ban.

Be careful
While these forums are a place where members of the community can discuss their views and opinions on various subjects, please try to avoid delving into emotionally charged and divisive topics such as politics and religion, or if you must, do so thoughtfully and respectfully, not purely to argue. As such, any excessively inflammatory political or ideological posts may be edited without warning, and threads whose sole purpose is the promotion of the above will be locked or deleted.

Everyone is a volunteer
Whether you’ve run into an issue with the game, are having problems creating your own content, or have any other questions that you would like answered, always ask for help, don’t demand it. Our community is run by volunteers located around the world, from the developers to the site administrators to the forum moderation staff, and each one of them has their own interests and occupations. They may choose not to help you if you make the process unpleasant.

Avoid excessive text formatting
When creating a thread, make sure that the title accurately conveys what the thread is about. Thread titles IN ALL CAPS (shouting!) are highly frowned upon, and may be edited or the thread deleted. You can use smilies to convey emotions, but if your post contains only smilies or contains a disproportionate amount of them, the post may be edited or deleted. Avoid colors and exceedingly large or small font sizes in your posts unless they are needed to convey additional information or ease readability.

Avoid double-posting
Post a single idea, question, or comment in only one forum section or topic — duplicate posts or threads will be deleted. When replying to a topic, make sure you know the context and that you are contributing to the discussion in some way. Avoid double-posting — in most situations, you should edit your last post instead, especially if nobody has had a chance to read it. However, bumping support requests in support sections (Technical Support, WML Workshop, etc) is fine, as is posting announcements in your own content development topics.

Don’t post nonsense
Nonsense posts may be deleted without warning, especially in a working topic. Likewise, threads over a year old that are revived without adding to or continuing the thread’s topic may be locked, and new posts will either be deleted or split into their own thread.

Don’t circumvent locked threads
If a thread you started or were participating in has been locked, you may message the Forum Moderators group with your concerns, but starting a new thread on the forums for the sole purpose of contesting or circumventing the lock (also known as “meta-threading”) is not acceptable.

Don’t draw attention to them
Animated avatars and graphical signatures are not allowed. Signatures may not contain text larger than the default font size, use colors, or use certain BBCode tags that may render the signature larger or more visible than the actual post contents by altering its layout ([quote], [code], [c], [spoiler], [section], [center], and [indent]). If you want to include a quote in your signature, you may use quotation marks, italics, bold, and other formatting, or a combination thereof.

Don’t do it
Even though Wesnoth’s assets in mainline and on the add-ons servers are provided under the terms of either the GNU GPL or a Creative Commons license, this does not in any way void their authorship. Claiming other people’s creative output to be your own is not acceptable, and will get you banned. If you repost art, especially from outside this community, make sure that you are allowed to do so and link to its original source. All content on the Internet is implicitly copyrighted and the sole property of its author(s) unless stated otherwise.

Avoid posting mature content
Avoid posting images depicting gratuitous violence, sexualized content, or other mature themes. Any content deemed inappropriate may be removed at any time. If you are unsure if something is inappropriate or not, it is highly encouraged that you ask the Forum Moderators via a private message.

Wesnoth.org is not a file-sharing site
Files uploaded with the Upload Attachment option are hosted on Wesnoth’s servers. This functionality is provided as a convenience for our users and contributors, and not with the intent of serving as an imageboard, public file-sharing service, or CDN. It is also not meant to be used for circumventing our Rules for the official add-ons server, or distributing legally dubious content.

If you wish to clarify or contest a forum moderation action or request, use the private messaging system to message either the forum moderator in question or the Forum Moderators group. Public discussion of forum moderation actions, whether it be on these forums, the multiplayer servers, IRC, or Discord is strictly forbidden.

Additionally, when posting on the forums, do not impersonate moderators or engage in backseat moderation. This not only confuses other people — newcomers in particular — it may also drive them away from the community.

If you have a complaint or request for a multiplayer moderator, send a private message to either the Multiplayer Moderators group, or a single member directly if you know of any that may be relevant to your case. Threads created on the forums for the purpose of demanding a ban to be lifted or applied will be locked or deleted on sight.

These forums have a Report Post button next to each post for you to use any time you spot someone violating the Posting Guidelines, engaging in abusive behavior, or posting unsolicited content (spam). Do not hesitate to use this function to alert the moderation team to potential issues, so that they can more quickly be made aware of and sort out any problems.

You are also able to report PM abuse, as the same button is available when reading your private messages. Bear in mind that after submitting your report, the offending message will be made available for all forum moderators and administrators to see its complete contents, including any quotes it may contain.

For more general issues which have no specific report button (e.g. signatures, avatars), you should send a private message to the Forum Moderators group instead, making sure to provide any information you feel to be relevant.

Do not reply to spam or violations of these Posting Guidelines. Doing so only creates obstructions for any forum moderators who are working to address the issue, and in the process might need to delete or edit other people’s posts to avoid leaving inconsistent threads behind.

Changelog:

2010-10-16 — Complete revision; some items added or clarified.2011-04-04 — Added more quote-like BBCodes to point 3b.2012-05-16 — Added point 2c, addressing forum attachments use/misuse.2013-01-15 — Reworded point 1f, clarifying the double-posting issue; added feedback directions to point 4a; added directions to point 5 for elements missing a report function.2013-07-02 — Clarified some language in point 4c.2015-05-06 — Clarified some language in point 1b.2017-06-06 — Added more layout BBCodes to point 3b.2018-03-04 — General rewrite.